


Interdimensional Home

by mademoisellePlume



Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-25
Updated: 2016-02-19
Packaged: 2018-02-18 16:59:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2355833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mademoisellePlume/pseuds/mademoisellePlume
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After five years of war, the Ellimist makes an offer to the Animorphs that they couldn't have expected. If they accept, the war may end, but the duty they will take up will last the rest of their lives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Deal

My name is Jake. It’s been five years since I was a normal kid who played basketball and complained when my mom made something I didn’t like for dinner. Five years since I last really talked to my brother. Five years since I was put in charge of my friends and the battle for Earth.

It’s not done me much good.

It’s been two years since I failed to save my parents. I haven’t even seen them for a year and a half, I think Visser One took them into hiding just so he can taunt me with how unreachable they are. 

Two years of living with the Hork-Bajir has made us lose a lot in privileges and comforts, but it’s given us a lot in a sort of freedom, a place to come back to and relax, and has a myriad of small mercies. Without mirrors here for example, I have no idea how bad the shadows under my eyes are. Michelle and Walter cluck over them sometimes. I wonder if they’re worse than the shadows under everyone else’s. We have James and his team now, but we original six, we fight the most and plan the most too, they’re too young. Not all that much younger than us in years, but war ages your soul faster. 

Sometimes I have dreams that I send them all to their deaths, and that their deaths didn’t even matter. I nod at James, ghosts of those nightmares hanging in the back of my head. He’s holding court with Collette and the rest of them sitting in a circle, either on the grass or in wheelchairs. Loren’s sitting with them, having connected with them quite well. Those of the Auxiliaries that were healed by morphing get along with her especially well. I think they all helped each other with how to deal with that, but I tried to keep my nose out of that. I didn’t and still don’t think they need the input of someone who couldn’t possibly understand.

Rachel and Naomi are shouting at each other, and I miss the way they used to shout. At least then it felt like they cared about the arguments. We’re all running out of fire, out of hope, and they argue like a wheel falls into a groove in the road. I snag Rachel’s arm and tow her away without so much as a word. I hear Eva greet Naomi from behind us, a distraction as smooth as butter.

Rachel hisses in annoyance but goes along with me. We’re late, after all. 

The sun is setting on the Hork-Bajir Valley, and Cassie is standing in front of the tree Tobias is perched on, the soft orange glow of the sunset making her skin glow in the most beautiful way. She turns to us and smiles. “You’re late.” 

“Mom wants to train Toby in legal terms. Says it will help her lobby for her people after.” Rachel rolls her eyes. You’re not even looking at her face, you can just hear the rolling. It’s not a bad idea, and you’re impressed Naomi is still planning for after. When was the last time I thought about after the war? “Jake slept in, though.” 

“I did not.” I shove her a little, and she pushes back, and it’s only the ‘sound’ of Ax’s mental voice that breaks things up. 

<Marco and I have brought what he insists is something you’ll enjoy.>

“I can’t be the only one who wants to get drunk the night before the big shebang!” They join our group under the shade of the big oak tree, Marco holding a case of beer with a grin.

<We’re not twenty-one.> Tobias points out, and Marco rolls his eyes.

“You’re just mad because the buzz won’t last when you demorph.” He sets the case down and tosses everyone with hands and mouth available a can and holds one out to Tobias. “C’mon handsome, get human and enjoy it for a while at least. You only live once.”

<I think we’ve had a few experiences where we were as good as dead, Marco, if you think back->

“Okay, fine, whatever, let’s not bring logic into this. Look, this is our big push, and we’re so optimistic about our chances that even Rachel didn’t even sound enthusiastic when she said ‘let’s do it.’ So let’s live a little while we’re still breathing.” 

I crack open my beer, it fizzes, and I take a mouthful. It’s warm and tastes awful but I decide I like it. Ax and Tobias are morphing and demorphing respectively, and Rachel and Cassie exchange a glance I don’t quite understand. 

I wish Marco was exaggerating. This plan of ours is wild and reckless and suicidal beyond what our plans usually are. But I’m too tired of this war to be cautious. We all are. We need this to end. 

And if we fail… well, James and his team are more than ready to pick up where we left off. 

“C’mon Xena, scared of a little alcohol?” Marco teases, noticing Rachel’s can is still closed. 

She bares her teeth, easily baited by Marco this time. “I’m not scared of anything, shithead. Maybe some of us want to actually go over the plan instead of just pouring this piss-flavoured-” 

“Guys?” Tobias interrupted, already human, and that was a really fast morph, considering that Ax is still mostly Andalite. I look again and no, Ax is entirely Andalite and if I twist my head around, there’s almost no movement, Peter frozen as he trips over a Hork-Bajir’s foot. 

“Fucking hell.” I swear, and I’d toss my beer away if it didn’t stick in the air like it was sitting on an invisible shelf. “Which one of you goddamn superior assholes is it this time?” 

“You kids used to be a lot more respectful.” The old elf-man that appears before us says with a trace of sadness in his manufactured voice.”

“Does anyone remember being respectful?” Marco asks in his best ‘confused’ voice. 

“I think we swore less?” Rachel says, scratching her head. 

“What are you here for?” Cassie asks the Ellimist, ignoring the more entertaining line of questioning. “What do you want from us now?” 

“I have a deal to propose.” 

All of us groan.

“What now, you obtuse semi-mystical motherfucker?” Marco says with this wrinkle between his eyebrows that I know means he’s going to be nursing a headache later.

“You have a plan for tomorrow, yes? Even though two of you are rethinking that choice.” I blink. Who’s rethinking? Rachel, maybe, given how she’d been about to insist on talking when the Ellimist showed up. Right now her eyes focus on the being that is speaking to us, blue eyes bright, her hands on her hips, fingers splayed wide. “I want to offer you the chance for it to work.”

“In exchange for?” Tobias asks sharply, and we all know why he’s so suspicious. I wonder suddenly why he’s in human form right then. It’s more usual for the Ellimist to knock us back to our default shapes.

The world spins around us, and we’re standing in darkness, surrounded by images. Different versions of ourselves in situations I don’t remember ever happening. “Perhaps you are familiar with the concept that every time a decision is made, there’s another universe created where a different decision is made?”

“You hear that, Big Jake, there’s a universe where you made the basketball team!” Marco tells me in his chirpiest tone, and I give him my best ‘not the time’ glare. He still sniggers, the asshole.

“There is a main timeline, and there are innumerable instances that have shot off from that timeline.” The Ellimist continues, ignoring Marco.

<What makes this one the main one?> Ax’s main eyes are focused on the nigh-omniscient being lecturing at us.

“It’s not. The main one had a war that ended in three years.” I stare as I hear everyone else react loudly. How different would we be if the war had ended two years ago? The Ellimist is apparently deaf to our exclamations, as he continues. “That’s where my game with Crayak is truly played. But in these offshoots, we have… call them bonus rounds. And for every loss I have in these universes, I have a consolation prize. The children of your alternates may escape their timelines that have been claimed by the Crayak. And they’ll need a home.”

“What?” I ask hoarsely, but I know what he means and I reach out for Cassie’s hand.

“Wait, you’re not suggesting we’re going to take in a bunch of homeless kids of other versions of us are having? That’s ridiculous, we still have a war on!” Marco shouts, gesturing somewhere behind us as if to point out the location we’re still in.

“The exchange for this service will be my guarantee your plan for tomorrow will work. You will succeed, whereas if you refuse this offer… you will take your chances. But if you succeed tomorrow, your war ends.”

“Even without a war, none of us are ready to be PARENTS!”

“Um.” Cassie’s hand is suddenly tight, I realize what this implies and everything I was thinking suddenly turns into incomprehensible static.

“We were going to mention it today, actually. Sort of put a new spin on the nigh-suicide mission tomorrow.” Rachel has one hand on her midsection and is running the other one through her hair. Tobias looks less shocked than I feel right now. Maybe she’d told him already, maybe he just wasn’t showing his surprise.

“...Oh my god, was it that hard to get protection? Both of you!?” Marco squawks.

I snarl at him. “Shut up, Marco, we weren’t about to go on a mission into yeerk-controlled territory because we were fucking horny!”

“So instead we’re going to become parents in the middle of a war? Can the girls even morph safely when pregnant?!”

<Andalite females can actually morph for the first eight months of the gestation period, it’s only during the latter four they should refrain. I’m not sure how that translates to humans.> Ax sounds more curious than anything, a stalk eye each on Rachel and Cassie, as if trying to spot the differences now that they had passengers.

“Well, there’s that problem solved!” Marco’s hands fly into the air and frustration has him gritting his teeth again, a habit he’s been developing recently.

“Marco, calm down.” Cassie snaps, and we all look at her. At my beautiful Cassie. At my pregnant girlfriend. Oh fucking hell, I’m going to be a dad. I can’t be a dad. I swallow my mounting panic and tune in to what Cassie’s saying with some effort. “...Either way, we’re going to be parents. Either we have two kids and the war continues, or we have more and the war is over. Me and Rachel already talked about this, and we’ve made our decisions.” Rachel and her lock eyes and nod.

I look to the Ellimist. “We need to talk about this.”

“Clearly. When you make your decision, I will return.”

The Ellimist vanishes and time snaps back with a shout from Marco’s dad as his face makes acquaintance with the ground.

So does everyone’s drinks. Marco deflates a little. “I was really looking forwards to getting drunk and having a good last night on earth. Now I need to contemplate parenthood? ...I think I still need the drink.”

He doesn’t reach for one, and we all sag to the ground, and I pull Cassie into my lap, resting my head on her shoulder. Tobias awkwardly holds Rachel’s hands and Marco looks between us all and rolls his head and leans his head on Ax’s flank, cuddling into the blue fur with an exaggerated soppy expression.

<Congratulations.> Ax says after the silence stretches out for a while.

We four parents-to-be nod. Marco mumbles under his breath about how he can get beer but apparently condoms are being guarded by Visser One himself. The asshole, see if I name my kid after him.

‘My kid.’ Oh my god, I’m going to have to learn dad jokes.

“Our decision is pretty obvious.” Tobias says. “Even without the kids. We can end the war.”

“What are we going to do with two kids? Much less any more than that?” Marco asks, and there’s a particular sort of despair in his voice and eyes that I recognize. I reach out my hand and grab his.

“We’ll deal with it together. As a team. As a family.” His hand squeezes mine. I squeeze back. He has to know he won’t lose us. “We’re a unit. That doesn’t change if the war ends. We agreed that a year ago, yeah?”

He doesn’t say anything, but Cassie puts her hand overtop of ours, adding warmth and support.

I look away, letting him gather himself. “This is going to have to be a vote, but I’d rather it be unanimous.”

“I want this war to be over. Especially with what’s coming for us either way.” Tobias spoke first, looking at Rachel with a strange sort of look in his eye.

“Those kids need a home.” Cassie says softly, looking up at me. “And we need an end to this war.”

<If this war ends, there may be much I’ll need to do off this planet, to teach my people, to help our cultures begin to connect. Earth deserves our help in recovering after no one ever came here for you humans, and someone will have to fight for that. But I will take any andalite children, and I will visit whenever possible, if that’s acceptable?> Ax’s tail is swaying, and I remember him saying something once about a limit of Andalite children. But his head is held high, and he looks proud and confident. We all nod our agreement to him.

“I… agree.” Rachel says, and no one makes eye contact. She sounds uncertain. We all know why. But the war had to end sometime.

“If we do this, we’re a family. For life. I know we’ll never be anything legal, and maybe we’ll change our minds about being what we all are to each other. But we’ll always have to work together. I’ll get Naomi to do something legal up for us all to sign if I have to.” Marco said, looking straight at me.

I nod. “We might not need or want to be with more than one person later. The war ending might change that. It might not. But I think we can all promise we won’t let ourselves drift away when it’s not just friendships and relationships at stake, it’s children.” There’s a murmuring agreement and Rachel stretches out her legs to rest her feet on Marco's lap.

“You think you’re getting rid of us?” She smirks, burying her uncertainty under a thin shell of nonchalance, not so well I can’t see it. We two and Ax and Tobias are the only ones that aren’t close in ‘that’ way, but that certainly doesn’t mean I don’t know my warrior cousin like the back of my hand.

“So we’re agreed. We’ll do it.”

“Excellent.” The Ellimist tells us, his breath tickling my ear, but when I jerk around, no one is there. Everyone else is looking behind them as well, so I guess that was a universal sensation.

“So, which one of you lovely ladies is naming their kid after me?” Marco says, and tickles the bottom of Rachel’s feet mercilessly, making her laugh loudly and kick her legs fiercely to free them.

"No way, loser!" 

My name is Jake. It’s been five years since this war started, and for the first time since it began, I think I have some hope for the future.


	2. The First

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The art in this chapter was done by raemcg.tumblr.com, a dear friend of mine and amazing artist. If you're looking for someone to commission, it should be her. :)

My name is Rachel, and I have lost the war.

It’s been about a day since we trounced the Yeerks once and for all, with the help of a deal we made with the Ellimist. The Visser who we fought for so long was forcibly removed from the Andalite body he’d held for so long, and Alloran shadows Ax like a bulky shadow.

He isn’t the only newly freed host.

The town is half rubble but luckily that just means we can commandeer whatever public building we want without much fuss. We’ve herded every controller into huge rooms in the community centre and taken turns guarding them, waiting for their slugs to die. The army is here now to help, but none of the resistance fighters are willing to stop guarding the Yeerks until they’re entirely vacated from human and Hork-Bajir skulls alike. Cassie has offered them all a chance to leave their hosts and nothlit as an animal, using the blue box we have as a bribe. Some took it. The rest refused.

Jake watches Tom and smiles as he’s sworn at viciously.

That’s my cousin for you. Every world leader wants a personal debriefing, and he’s letting the yeerk in his brother’s head cuss at him as he waits for it to die.

I hook my arm in his and pull him away. “That’s enough of that. We promised the Prime Minister you’d call him at four.”

“Which one?”

“The ugly one with the weird hair.” Look, I didn’t exactly have time to focus on geopolitics when I was fighting a war with aliens. “Marco left a note with the name, number and country in the office, so c’mon.”

The conversation with the President had happened right after the war did. Well, it had to, Visser One had been gloating as the President’s head was dunked into the Pool when we’d arrived on the scene just in time to stop him from being actually infested. Marco had ripped the slug right out of his ear and ripped it in half in the process.

Walking into the office, we both spun as the door closed behind us, my teeth lengthening and Jake’s skin bristling with tiger fur.

We stop morphing, not because we see the barrel of a dracon beam aimed at us, but because we see the wielder of it was a child.

“Jake the Yeerk Killer and Rachel the Bloody.” Her lips twist as she speaks the names that got more popular as the war got less hidden. Jake’s came from one of our greatest victories about a year and a half ago. We infiltrated the Pool Ship and flushed out thousands of Yeerks into space. We almost died ourselves, and it was only thanks to Ax’s piloting skills in a stolen Bug Fighter that we escaped back to Earth.

Mine just came about once they realized that we stuck to the same morphs in battle and then learned which of us had always been the bear. It was nice to be feared by my enemies.

“That’s us. Let me guess, you’re refusing to just give up and die, huh Yeerk? Let the poor kid go.” My teeth are back to normal size before I start speaking, and I toss my hair over my shoulder. I want to seem unaffected, but I am not going to attack this kid. But neither am I about to let me or Jake get shot.

“I’m very close to death. But you two are not escaping the consequences of what you’ve done.”

I expect the little finger on the trigger to squeeze after a statement like that, but big green eyes just look at Jake. “The battle last night had two casualties I and my host witnessed. We saw a tiger kill her father, and a bear her mother.”

“I-” Jake didn’t say anything further, meeting her eyes helplessly. His body is tense, and I wonder if he has the same intense urge to flee the room as I do. Not running from a battle is one thing, but I never signed on to have to look the children of Controllers in the face when they’d known what I’d done.

“I am Aliss 392 of the Sulp Niar Pool.” The little girl says, her round chin raising a little, her tone edged with ice. “And I am all she has left to care for her, and I will die soon.”

I sneer, I can’t help it. “I don’t think controlling her every move is ‘caring’ for her, Yeerk.”

“I have kept her alive in this war, and knowing her brought me to a better understanding of the cruelties of what we have been doing on this planet. Without her, I may never have joined the Peace Movement.”

Of course it had to be one of Tidwell’s yeerk’s buddies. No reason this shouldn’t be complex as all get out.

“You can morph and become a nothlit, you don’t have to die.” Jake points out, taking a step closer.

She points the weapon directly at him, her eyes narrowing. Her jaw moves a little before she speaks next, teeth grinding together. “I am not going to die as anything other than who I am. I am a Yeerk, and I will die as one.”

“So what do you want from us?” I demand, getting the gun pointed at me for my trouble.

Aliss 392 sniffs delicately. “Since you have killed her parents, and are putting an end to any Yeerk presence on this planet, it seems only fair to me that you take over the task of rearing my young friend.”

“I- that’s not how custody-” Jake splutters.

“I don’t care! You created this situation, you must protect this girl! She deserves better.” She bares her teeth at us, and Jake and I look at each other, each at a loss for words. “You will do this. And you will let me die in peace, I won’t have her live through the fugue with me in her head, but neither will I die alone.”

She opened the door with one hand, dracon still trained on us, and made good her escape.

Later we found the little brown-haired girl in a corner, the remains of a yeerk in her hands, silent tears coursing down her cheeks.


	3. The Births

My name is Tobias and I am in trouble. What idiot thought the kid who more or less raised himself should become a dad? (Exactly how much credit am I giving my aunt and uncle? Zero.)

The idiot in question is somehow making waddling look like it’s how all models walk down the catwalk. I groom my feathers a bit and fly down to a good perch on the back of a solid-looking chair. We’re past the point where landing on Rachel’s arm was an option- morphing had been declared off limits after four months, given what Ax said about Andalite gestation in regards to morphing. Besides, it had been a tactic she liked sometimes for intimidation. Now that the war was over, it just garnered us strange looks.

We’re meant to be meeting with ambassadors from the Andalite homeworld, along with representatives from most human countries. The Andalite ambassadors will be sitting in with the United Nations, from what I understand.

“Are you going to morph for the meeting?” She lowers herself into my chair slowly, making the smallest noise of relief. Absently, I reach down and gently grasp a lock of her hair with my beak, pulling it to the side. My beautiful Rachel smiles as I preen her.

<The meeting will go past two hours, and you know how Andalites are. I might as well be honest about what I am from the start, then have them make offended noises when I have to excuse myself to demorph.>

She sighs and puts a hand on her stomach. “Any boy name ideas yet?” She asks, dropping the subject.

<I still like ‘Loren’ for a girl.> The woman who is my mother is still half a stranger to me - but we’re working on it. We both are just… trying.

“I know you like ‘Loren’ for a girl.” She rolled her eyes, but looks back at me, her lips quirked upwards. “I think that it’s a girl, but we should have a boy name too.”

Sometimes I wish I could shrug. <Hedrick?>

“Shut up!” She laughs. “Alright, so we’re still short on boy names. We’ll call him Hercules and Marco can die happy.”

Her laugh doesn’t last. It rarely does. I think she feels stifled. Before she got so far in her pregnancy, she was prowling around rooms, unable to stay still. (And don’t ask what sort of cravings she had, it doesn’t bear repeating. Jake got off easy with Cassie. All she wanted was raw seal meat.)

<Where’s Alice, anyways? Your mom watching her?>

“You know she throws a fit if we say Alice and not Aliss. Little more sizzle at the end.” Rachel frowns and twirls a lock of hair around a finger. “Jake’s got her. Last time we left her with Naomi, they got in a screaming match about personhood and ethics. And his parents are still recovering from everything, we don’t want them to deal with little miss wants-her-yeerk-back.”

<Jake’s not here for the meeting?> I’m surprised about that, but not about Aliss. She’s a sullen kid from what I’ve seen of her, but I get it. Everything she had is gone, and she doesn’t much like who’s taking care of her now. Poor kid.

“Nah, he will be, we just have to hope she’ll be on her best behaviour. I got her the cutest little dress, just wait until you see it. She is ridiculously attached to dark colours, tiniest goth I ever did see.”

Marco arrives then, bending over and pressing a quick kiss to Rachel’s lips. My feathers ruffle. <We’re in the UN, Marco, I really would prefer for the story about how we’re a group of polygamists not to come out here.> Really, I’d prefer it never to come out. Far too many people are interested in us as it is.

“Polyamory and polygamy is different, Tobias.” He says in a slightly nasal voice, trying to sound like the annoying dweeb he already is most of the time. “Besides, it’s not all of us either, we’ve managed to keep Rachel away from Jake, and you have no interest in Ax.”

“Marco, I swear to god, you know me and Jake don’t have a thing.” Rachel said, exasperatedly swatting his arm. He’s lucky she’s pregnant, and it’s an important event.

“Yeah, yeah, that’s why you have such a deep connection and intense staredowns.”

“Marco!”

“Anyways, it was just a peck, I would think you, as a bird, would approve of pecks.”

<Haha, Marco. Hilarious.>

He laughed. “I promise you, in a building full of politicians, someone’s done worse here. Anyways! How far along are you now, you’re huge!” And he’s poking my stomach.

I screech at him and go for his finger like I’m going to snap it off and down it like a ra- like a mouse. He jerks his hand away, affecting an outraged look.

“He’s touchy about his weight these days, Marco. Who knew how fattening a shrew or two could be.” Rachel sniggers and pats his arm before returning her hand to her rounded stomach. “I’m due in three weeks, and Cassie’s due in two. They cut this meeting damn close.”

Marco’s lips twitched, and I just knew he made a dirty joke to himself about shrews being eaten when Rachel was the only one with that morph. “They wanted to make it before the big arrival, I guess. Has Alice warmed up to the idea of two younger-”

“ALISS. IT’S ALISS. SAY IT RIGHT.” Three more figures enter the room noisily, the little girl who was foisted on Jake and Rachel getting red in the face as she shouted. Her dress, dark red and with a skirt so full it looked more appropriate for a cake topper then a kid, was, admittedly, cute. The effect was spoiled a little by the red harness overtop it, connected in the back to the length of red fabric Jake held.

“You put her on a leash?” Marco asked incredulously, just barely holding in his snickering. I could tell by the way his shoulders were shaking.

Cassie put a hand on her head.

“IT’S NOT A LEASH. He just can’t keep up with a little kid on his own.” Aliss sniffed and ruined her little disdainful comment by kicking Jake in the shin.

“Aliss, please stop kicking Jake.” Rachel said, leaning her head back.

“I’ll do what I want! I hate you!” And Jake was kicked again.

“Oh, she’s already a teenager at age eight. Great. This’ll be fun.” Marco groaned, earning a light whack on the head from Cassie.

“She’s been through a lot at a young age, try and be understanding.” Cassie told him as Aliss crossed her arms and blew out an annoyed breath.

“I’ve been through a lot at a young age, but I don’t bruise up Jake’s legs.” Marco said, then grinned when Rachel snorted in laughter. “I don’t kick him, anyways.”

<How do you know she’s eight, has she opened up to you or something?> I ask Marco, curious.

He rolled her eyes. “The little Princess of zippered lips? Talk about herself? She won’t even tell anyone her name, you gotta be kidding me. I’m guessing.”

“My name is Aliss, now, I told you!” It was Marco’s turn to get kicked and he said a word quite inappropriate to say both in the UN and in front of a child.

“Ahem.” And of course, a woman dressed quite nicely in a pantsuit was there, with the perfectly worst timing she could have had. “Are you ready?”

“Almost, sorry, you know how it is when you’re still settling a child in.” Cassie said, flashing a smile.

“Well, when you’re ready, meet me in the hallway, I’ll take you to the representatives.” She closed the door and I started to morph into my human self.

“Ew.” Aliss said, turning away with a wrinkled nose.

“What, you never saw anyone morph before?” Rachel asked her, amused.

“I did! I saw the Visser do it tons, it’s just still gross, like you.” She didn’t quite dare to kick Rachel, whether that was due to her pregnancy or her reputation, it remained to be seen.

Lurching unsteadily to half-finished feet, I put a hand on Rachel’s shoulder. “It is pretty gross.”

“Not nearly as gross as a bug morph is.”

“Gross is gross.”

“You’re both gross, congratulations.” Cassie gave my butt a pat and nodded to the bag in the hand Jake didn’t hold Aliss’ leash in. “Now get dressed up so Rachel doesn’t bust out a temper tantrum when we go in public as a group.” I nod and duck into the attached bathroom, still hearing most of what’s being said.

“I would not!”

Marco snickered. “Yeah, right. Face it, Xena, fashion is the only battleground you have left.”

“How did I ever think you jerks were intimidating at all?” Aliss mumbled, despairing of the group she was so determined to despise.

I tune out at that point, pulling the suit jacket on. I’m minimizing the amount of fancy as much as possible, leaving off the tie that was included and leaving a few buttons open. I’d rather not feel like I was about to get choked.

“...So, we’re thinking Jamie for a girl, and Tom for a boy.” Cassie is saying as I slouch back into the room.

“James will be thrilled.” Rachel said with a little chuckle. “We’re not sure about a boy name yet.”

“Marco agrees with me that it should be Hedrick.” I tell them, glad my hawk-serious face makes bluffing easy. Cassie giggles right away as Jake blinks a few time, then snickers. He looks tired.

“Over my dead body. Let’s go already. Here, Jake, I’ll take the leash.” Rachel takes Aliss from him and holds my hand gently.

We’re barely in the room, spotting the Andalite ambassadors, Ax standing with them, when Cassie cries out and grabs her stomach. We all go towards her, our group and the various representatives, when Rachel goes still and flushes bright pink. She bites her lip, looks down, then looks towards Cassie’s feet. “Okay. Okay, meeting cancelled, sorry folks!” She calls with forced cheer. “The dangers of arranging meetings with pregnant ladies, I’m afraid. We’ll have to go.”

There’s a pool of liquid at her feet, and it feels like my head is stuffed with cotton. “What?”

“Honey, give me your arm, and help me outside, I think me and Cassie need to head to the hospital now.”

“Oh! Oh, okay.” I want to swing her up in my arms and carry her that way, but my morph does not have the muscles for that. I put my arm under hers and take her weight and Marco does the same on the other side.

Jake swings Cassie up into his arms, his eyes slightly wild. Rachel’s dropped Aliss’ leash at this point, but Ax runs to catch up with us, grabbing her leash and keeping pace with her as he follows.

“It’s time, oh my god it’s time. How do we get there oh my god, oh my god.” I thought it was Jake talking for a second before I realized it was me. I have a child attempting to get out of Rachel right now, and the thought is terrifying.

“Marco, tell me you brought your huge environment-ruining van.” Jake says with only a hint of desperation.

“I brought the despair of Cassie’s faith in me, yes.” Marco led the way to where he parked, and we packed everyone inside, waiting for what felt like an eternity for Ax to morph in order to fit.

“Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!” My leg won’t stop bouncing, and Marco has to try several times before he can get the seatbelt of his seat to close. Jake's face is doing that thing it used to do when missions were going wrong and he was trying to think of something to do.

“We’re in love with useless wrecks, Rachel.”

“We knew it all along.” Cassie reaches out for Rachel’s hand and they hold onto each other. There aren’t as much pained noises as I thought there’d be, just little gasps and quiet noises. Pain tolerances built up over the past few years are coming in handy, I guess, clinging onto Rachel’s other hand.

Getting into the hospital, the nurses ask a barrage of questions, and no one questions our polite demand for one room with two beds for the deliveries or asks any of us to leave. A half hour in, Naomi shows up, kisses Rachel on the head, and takes Aliss out of the room by the hand, letting her hold her own leash in the other.

“Al.” I say suddenly. “If it’s a boy. Al.” Rachel smiles at me, sweaty and beautiful.

“Yeah. Yeah, that works.” I wonder what Elfangor would have thought about all this. It’s something I bet he never would have expected.

Ax touches my shoulder. “You should demorph soon, Tobias. So there’s time before the birth. Earth.”

“This might take a day, Ax.” Cassie tells him and he blinks a few times before repeating her words in what seemed like fascinated horror.

“I’m good.” I whisper, and Rachel looks up at me in surprise. “I’m staying right here until I’m a dad.”

“Are you sure?” She asks quietly, and I kiss her.

There’s no doubt in my mind now, and 36 hours later, when Jamie is in Jake’s arms, and I’m looking down at Al in Rachel’s, I know it’s not a decision I’ll ever regret, to start a new life as nothing but a human the same day that we bring a new human life out into the world.


	4. The Arrival

My name is Marco and being a parent is _hard_.

Yeah, the others keep rolling their eyes at me when they say that. Is it my fault I’m the only one without a bio-kid? But I bought the house we’re all sharing for now, and I’m there every day and night, helping change diapers and prevent Aliss's escape attempts.

It has been almost nine months since Al and Jamie were born, and things have been just exhausting. I've been acting as our public face to the world, doing the talk show circuit, joking and laughing with host after host, charming the world the way I could never quite charm anyone into a date. (Thank god I don’t have to worry about that anymore.)

It’s been doing well for me, and some careful agreements to do cameos on television shows and special effects work in movies has money rolling in pretty regularly. Which is good because babies are expensive, and we’re expecting a lot more. It isn’t yet enough money for _another_ baby, so we’ll have to find more ways to earn money as time goes on. Maybe we can make an issue of having saved the world without even earning minimum wage.

“Marco, can you keep an eye on the A-team for an hour or two so I can get some shut eye?” Rachel interrupted me as I was jotting down some notes for the book on the Yeerk War that I planned to at least half-write before letting a ghostwriter spice up my prose.

“Yeah, no problem, Rachel. Go nap. I got them,” I told her and took Al out of her arms, bouncing him a little bit. “Tobias said he’d be back soon, he was going with Ax to see if Loren could visit for a while.”

“Calling in the reinforcements again?” She snorted and waved Aliss towards me before vanishing up the stairs.

“Can you believe she’s criticizing with how often Naomi gets called over here?” I asked Aliss, watching her climb up into a chair and fiddle with one of the prototypes of a new Hork-Bajir plastic toy. The toy manufacturer sent us a few of the prototypes for approval of both us and the free Hork-Bajir, and Aliss had chosen a favourite and kept it as a comfort item. “We are definitely over-plumbing the grandparent resources. We know more kids are on the way soon; we’re going to need them fresh and ready.”

“You’re all dumb, so it makes sense,” she grumbled. It’d been than a year since she started living with us, and she might be a little less prone to violence and running away but she still wasn’t a very happy kid. I think she’s slowly, reluctantly, getting fond of us though.

“Not me, kiddo,” I argued. “ _My_ parents have remained uncalled and only come help when they think they should.”

“Have you told them you’re expecting?” she asked, wrinkling her nose at me.

“...Hey, have you had lunch yet? Here, let’s get something put together for you.” I put a happily babbling Al in the high chair, sprinkling some cheerios in front of him. He was a very pretty little boy, with fair blonde hair that he definitely gets from Rachel and a long nose that Tobias was fond of bopping with a finger. We definitely lucked out that both Alan and Jamie are generally sweet-hearted kids.

“You’re ignoring me!” Aliss shouted. I sighed.

“Mac and cheese? Or how ’bout some frozen pizza? I defrost a mean pizza if I do say so myself.” Yeah, none of us had been totally honest with our parents about the impending trans-dimensional kids. It was hard to bring up in conversation.

She pouted, but gave up. “I want frosted cheerios.”

“That’s all you’ve eaten all week,” I told her dutifully.

“I WANT IT!”

Well, I’m not her pseudo-incestuous parents. “Okay, okay, hold your horses.”

She got her bowl of frosted cheerios with a dash of milk (not too much or she’d scream about that, too). I decided that I wasn’t too lazy to insist a child eat something more substantial but instead that this made me the fun uncle. Or fun parent. We should probably talk about how we’re going to have each other’s kids refer to their non-biological child-rearers sometime soon.

I picked up the regular cheerios that had dropped to the floor and tossed them into my mouth, inciting Alan to babble louder at me. He kept grasping them one at a time off his tray in a pudgy little fist and then shoving as much of that fist as he could into his mouth in order to deposit the cereal piece. Adorable.

“Marco! _Again_? Really?” Cassie said, sounding very annoyed. Apparently, she was home from shopping, Jamie in a carrier on her back and groceries in her hands. Jake was struggling behind her with bags full of diapers and his face full of regret that he’d talked Cassie out of using cloth ones. “We all agreed she wasn’t getting anymore cereal!”

“What? Oh my god Aliss, where did you get that cereal??” I whipped my head around dramatically and pointed at her accusingly.

I actually got a giggle out of her. It was a cute sound. I needed to try and generate it more often.

“That better be the rest of the box, because we didn’t get anymore,” Jake grumbled. He put the bags to the side and closed the front door, though at this point he could’ve left it open without worry. Other celebrities had to worry about paparazzi, but the paparazzi had learned quick that Rachel had a short temper and there weren’t enough lawsuits in the world to make it worth staying still when a grizzly bear charged.

“What?!” Aliss demanded loudly, glaring at Jake. “You said you’d buy more!”

“Jake!” Cassie admonished.

“I didn’t!” Jake insisted. Cassie didn’t look like she believed him, and neither did I, really. Rachel and Jake had a hard time telling the kid ‘no’ outright.

“You’ve got more in the box, kiddo; he still has time. But you won’t be getting any more if you don’t vary your diet up some. Cassie is getting exasperated.” I warned her in a fake whisper.

She sat back and pouted, and Jake mouthed a thank you at me as he put the groceries away for Cassie. Luckily, she was busy cooing over her shoulder at little Jamie. “Hey there sweet girl, we’re home! We’re home with Aliss and Al and Marco!”

“Maco!” the curly haired cutie repeated, showing her pink gums and single tooth in a cheerful grin.

“We gotta work on these kids learning my name prop-” The world seemed to spin around me, and I broke off talking, grabbing the counter to steady myself. “Woah. Ugh.”

Al and Jamie started to cry loudly, and the cereal bowl hit the table. “What’s HAPPENING?!” Aliss shouted, hands on her head, Hork-Bajir toy still held in one of them.

Jake gathered up Al, bouncing him to try and calm him down. “Marco?” he asked. “We’re not feeling anything, but you don’t look so good.”

My head hurt, but I put a hand on Aliss’ shoulder. I tried to reassure her, “Hey, kid, you survived a war, same as us. Calm down. Deep breaths now.” I looked back up at Jake. “My head is pounding, and I feel dizzy. I feel like- Something’s going to happen.”

Cassie pushed me into a chair and lifted Aliss up into another one. Our kitchen was usually open and comfortable, but right then, it seemed like it was too small for whatever was coming.

The babies couldn’t be soothed; they just kept screaming. Rachel came down the stairs two at a time, one shoulder bulging with the muscles of a grizzly bear. She reversed the changes when she saw no enemy. “What’s happening?” she demanded.

But before I could answer, light erupted in front of me, and I jumped to my feet! I was acting purely on instinct as I reached out to the light, ignoring Jake, Cassie, Rachel, and Aliss all shouting at me to stop.

It was warm inside the light, much warmer than it was in our kitchen. A bundle was pressed into my hands, and an adult’s hand grasped mine, squeezing hard before letting go suddenly. My shoulders were shoved, and I stumbled back, butt hitting the kitchen table.

The light flared so bright it hurt my eyes, then vanished in the next moment. When I looked down at what I held in my arms, I saw a dark-haired newborn wrapped in cloth with a wristband on the tiny wrist. Guadalupe Guerra was scrawled on the wristband in marker. They had a sweet little frown on their face, and squinted up at me, making eye contact that I couldn’t break.

“Oh my god,” Cassie said, staring.

“Oh my gosh,” Aliss whispered, peering up to see the new kid clutched in my arms.

“Hah! Now you have one too!” Jake said. Cassie stepped on his foot.

“Hello, Guadalupe,” I whispered, ignoring everyone else (especially my bonehead leader).

Oh fuck, I was a dad. The infant burbled softly and was so tiny and light in my arms. My headache was gone like I’d never had one. Instead I was realizing the difference between considering myself a heavily invested uncle or stepdad and thinking of myself as a full parent who was actually the primary caregiver.

“Can someone call my mom?” I asked without looking away. Aliss snickered at me, but that was okay.

**Author's Note:**

> BABYFIC!!!
> 
> Told you guys I could write something happy. SO THERE.


End file.
